The L.A. Times music blog

Neutral Milk Hotel releases authoritative vinyl box set

August 26, 2011 | 5:23
pm

A few years after some ponderous "What the heck happened to Jeff Mangum?" magazine pieces, the Neutral Milk Hotel frontman has, at last, made recent, tenative steps back into the public with a few solo shows and booking an installment of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival.

Today he also made fans of his singularly weird and moving folk around $88 poorer with an announcement of a massive vinyl box set that will contain his band's entire recorded output and a slew of unreleased recordings and art. The box set, out in November but available for pre-order now, includes NMH's two full-lengths (1996's "On Avery Island" and 1997's landmark "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea"), the "Everything Is" EP with extra tracks, a disc of unreleased acoustic recordings, two 7-inch singles, a picture disc of the single "Holland, 1945" and two art prints taken from "Aeroplane" and the box set's cover.

Mangum is also selling one-off handmade drawings for $15. If you still feel the waterworks coming on by the time you get to "Two Headed Boy Pt. 2," get on it now -- the band's website has been sporadically crashing with orders all day.

-- August Brown

Photo of Neutral Milk Hotel at Spaceland in 1998 by Daniel McClenaghan